With No Other Options, Moms Are Crowdfunding Maternity Leave Online

by Maura Hohman on March 13, 2016

Maura Hohman

About the Author

Maura Hohman is a Georgetown University and Mizzou journalism grad on a continuous quest for more Twitter followers. She currently works as a news writer and lifestyle editor for What to Expect and previously wrote for U.S. News & World Report, Health Day and Everyday Health.

About the Blog

WhatToExpect.com supports Word of Mom as a place to share stories and highlight the many perspectives and experiences of pregnancy and parenting. However, the opinions expressed in this section are those of individual writers and do not reflect the views of Heidi Murkoff of the What to Expect brand.

GoFundMe

Bringing home baby from the hospital should be one of the most exciting times of your life, filled with late-night bonding and plenty of firsts for you and baby, and for many parents it is. Unfortunately, though, too many American moms have this initial time cut short because they don't have access to paid maternity leave, and more time at home means less money in the bank.

The U.S. is one of only two countries that doesn't have a federal paid leave policy, along with Papua New Guinea. And even though many employers and several states offer paid leave, only about 12 percent of the American workforce has access to it. This means about 21 percent of moms who take time off after giving birth go back to work in less than two weeks, when most doctors recommend taking at least 12 to rest and recover.

Picking between a paycheck and caring for baby is a choice no parent should have to make, so more and more families are trying an online solution to ease some of the post-baby financial stress. It's crowdfunding, or accepting donations through a website you create on a platform like GoFundMe or GiveForward. On GoFundMe alone, a search for "maternity leave" returns 1,287 results.

Asking for money from family and friends to pay for parental leave may seem odd initially because you've probably mostly heard of crowdfunding as a way to pay for emergency medical expenses or an entrepreneurial endeavor. But when you think about the other leave options that are out there, it makes sense. For example, taking 12 weeks of unpaid leave (as alotted by the Family and Medical Leave Act) costs too much for low-income families. Payday loans can have interest rates as high as 500 percent, making them almost impossible to pay back, and accruing credit card debt can have long-term consequences, too.

With crowdfunding, you ask for help from your community of family and friends and pay a one-time fee to the platform you use, which varies depending on how much you make. It's simpler and saves you money, says Josh Chapman, CEO of GiveForward, because it's a donation you don't have to pay back, instead of a loan that you do. And because most users are asking people they know for help with something personal, there's almost no fraud on crowdfunding sites, experts say.

But if you think asking for financial assistance in this way would be outside of your comfort zone, you're not alone. One couple, the Lechettes, who crowdfunded Mom's leave, said even though the experience was "humbling," they decided to go through with it because it was low risk. If their crowdfunding site raised $0, they wouldn't be any worse off. Of course, they raised a lot more than $0 – $1,500 to be exact.

For the Lechettes, their successful campaign made a huge difference, but it shed light on how much the U.S. needs paid family leave. Parents shouldn't have to get creative or dig to find resources in order to afford to spend time with their new baby. And sure, new technology and community support for families are great things, but lots of moms don't meet their crowdfunding goal, unlike the Lechettes.

So, the best way to guarantee baby gets the best start to life? That's still federal paid parental leave.

Would you crowdfund your parental leave? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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